Geforce Now

largh

Keeper of the Watch
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While bored in a meeting, I tried running Geforce Now on my web-browser. Observations from this short trial:

  • You can link Steam, Epic and Ubisoft accounts and play pretty much any AAA game you own on any machine capable of running modern web-browsers given your internet connection is good enough (10 Mbps is probably good enough with full bandwidth usage).
  • They seem to have support for Chrome, Edge and Safari
  • 1 h sessions cost nothing. Longer than that costs 10$/€ per month
  • You do need to remember lots of passwords and do many 2-step authentications while setting your account up. Steam, Epic, and Ubisoft details are saved by the system. GOG details I am not sure about.
  • Also some GOG games are supported. I tried The Witcher 3. It was running OK, even a bit laggy for some reason. The first trial was not as smooth as I am used with Stadia.
  • The mouse in the Witcher 3 was horrible and different to the settings on my computer. I did manage to make it better by adjusting local settings. Didn't try long enough to find out whether the game was playable, but it still did not feel good.
  • The keyboard shifts to, perhaps, a US keyboard. Knowing where the keys are supposed to be without any keyboard viewer was challenging. Uncertain whether this issue prevails on Desktop app which they seem to have.
  • I tried Spellforce 3 from Steam to check whether my saved games where there. Did not find them, but again I did not remember my password for that game's online service. It seems that the service supports cloud sync but it is not possible to manually upload/download save files. Well, I guess as long as the cloud sync works, this will not be a problem but one has to check it for each game separately.

All in all, seems like worth 10€ a month if it works. I like the idea that you can play games you already own and do not need to re-buy them like on Stadia.

Does anyone have experience with Geforce Now to share with us?
 
Joined
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I have been using it for about 2 years, i use the app because the browser version really uses the cpu and heats it alot. I had no problems with lag or things like that, performance has been really good for me almost all the time.

The free tier now (or soon) will use 2060 rigs which are with real 1060 gpus i think and will suck for sure. In 2021 i used the free tier most of the time on what i played because i use servers where i dont have queues at all.

Nvidia have been shit lately though as they downgraded the 2080 rigs regarding the cpus and in demanding games there is a lot of audio stutter, not to mention the 3080 ripoff tier. Good news is you can get 3060 rigs if you are priority tier.

Remembering passwords work only in epic and ubisoft, for steam you can use ahk script.

With Spellforce 3 there is a problem with the game now, there was a big update in early december called Reforced and now saves get deleted after session restart. Old saves before Reforced dont work, thats the game's fault not gfn.

All in all the service is worth it with priority if you have some games to play but it has a lot of issues as well like few AAAs, EA games problems, slim or almost no communication at all to community, plus all the usual problems like lag, low performance and so on.

If you want to play many AAAs, try boosteroid or xcloud(but xcloud only uses gamepad now(
 
Thanks @porcozaur;. I'll try the desktop app. Perhaps that fixes the keyboard issue too.

Regarding Spellforce 3: I know. That's the last game I played on Steam so wanted to try it. I think it requires signing up to the online service and the saves will perhaps work then.

It occurred to me that if Starfield will be supported by Geforce Now, I could play it on that service. I cannot effort a new gaming rig and it won't come out initially on Stadia. Thought of buying an Xbox just for that game but prefer to stay on computers if possible.
 
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All in all the service is worth it with priority if you have some games to play but it has a lot of issues as well like few AAAs, EA games problems, slim or almost no communication at all to community, plus all the usual problems like lag, low performance and so on.

If you want to play many AAAs, try boosteroid or xcloud(but xcloud only uses gamepad now(

Didn't realize that there were so many cloud gaming services these days. In which regard is Boosteroid better than Geforce Now?
 
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With Spellforce 3 there is a problem from GFN (https://steamcommunity.com/app/311290/discussions/0/3191360735185854522/), i have the game as well and wanted to do a replay after Reforced was released; but that big update brought that problem, if you play (even logged in the game service - thq online or whatever is called ), save a game and restart the gfn session you wont find the saves. The old saves prior to Reforced update were auto deleted by the game, only way to get them is revert back on steam to legacy spellforce 3 or somethign like that, its written in the steam hub, that is how the game supposed to do, nothing related to gfn.

Starfield is from bethesda so 99.99% will be exclusive to xcloud, you wont find any bethesda games on gfn. As for boosteroid it has a lot of AAAs you wont find on gfn but it doesnt have free trial. Boosteroid is a good alternative, its 10e/month.

edit my pc is quite old and cant play these recent AAAs, but even if i could, i would still choose gfn because you dont need to download hundreds of GBs and dont need to bother with all the pc heat, cooler noise and so on.
 
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[*]1 h sessions cost nothing. Longer than that costs 10$/€ per month

Is that per 24 hours? In other words, could someone simply play for an hour, log out, and then immediately log back in for another hour?

Not that I would go through that much trouble just to save $10
 
Joined
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No day limit but obviously there are queues in the free tier and on weekends or busy evenings can be hundreds before you and you wait alot. Anyway, rumor is they will remove free tier soon, they downgraded it so much, its mostly crap now or will be soon when they finish with all this 3080 tier delivering stuff. If new users will see how crap it is, they wont pay then.

The service was top notch a few years ago, it had most of the big publishers on it but they all left when it got out of beta in spring 2020 in think, so ofc all AAAs dissapeared. Also about a year ago they removed from the service the steam app because some took advantage of it (steam was really cool, instead of lauching a game, you would launch the steam app and your library would appear, you could play also many unsupported games officially). Service really started going downhill after the cyberpunk launch, there were big queues even for paid tier, many got the game and wanted to play and nvidia downgraded their servers, especially the cpus, to make more virtual machines.

edit they do all these crap moves to push their 3080 tier which they launched 2 months ago, at the moment is a complete ripoff, you can buy just 6 months not monthly and there are few games that really need it.
 
Got it for a month. Playing Witcher 3 now. The game looks pretty good on ultra settings. Especially close. Medium distance does not look as good as in modern games and the foliage in the wind problem is still there. Anyway, there is sometimes a bit of lag. Otherwise, the keyboard and mouse issues were solved by using the desktop application. The lag is a bit worse than on Stadia which rather blurs the screen instead of jumping. I suppose it is because of my internet which is pretty good but the router isn't amazing. Saves get synced and everything works nicely.

As @porcozaur; mentioned, one of the best things is that I don't have to listen to my old gaming laptop hyperventilating.

Seems like Expeditions: Rome is on Geforce Now already. Will try it once the worst bugs have been fixed.

This is a pretty good alternative to buying a new computer every five years. Depending on how much money one has and how much time one spends gaming, of course.
 
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Here I was hoping streaming games would die off. Besides just being bad for consumers, since more and more stuff moves to a subscription model (WEF weren't kidding when they said we'd own nothing and be happy. besides the happy part :( ) there's also the issue of game preservation. When games start being streamed only. Then not even piracy will save those games. Dark future we're headed to. I'm still hoping the market will die off.
 
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Make Gaming a Priority​

  • Starting today, GeForce NOW is offering a limited-time discount sure to spark up gamers looking to skip the wait and jump right into their games. Through Sunday, May 21, get 40% off a six-month Priority membership for $29.99, normally $49.99.
 
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